CONSCIRES AGILE PRACTICES

The inherent power of the TaskBoard

By Bachan Anand / Filed under Agile / July 24th, 2010

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I have been very fascinated by the power of Task Board and the shift it brings to a Scrum team. Working with an organization that was very committed to improve their effectiveness by embracing Agile and Scrums’  value , I was reminded about a key role Task Board can play in helping any team be very effective.

Task Board use by Tobias Mayer in CSM class

We decided to introduce a physical task board to the team to visualize the work done during the Sprint. At the minimum a Task Board consists of To Do, Work in Progress( WIP) , Done, and Blocked  column . It is good to add a History ( for completed stories) and  Product Backlog ( Prioritized Stories and Epics ) to give an overall picture of the work planned for the release.We started the Sprint planning by adding story points ( relative estimate) to the  stories that were estimated  and we placed in the the Sprint Backlog /Stories section of the Backlog to be considered by the team to be picked up for the Sprint. As we moved along with the Sprint planning, the visual display of all the stories made it was so easy for the whole team to refer back to what likely to be  selected for the Sprint without having to refer back to spreadsheets or printouts.Once the team moved into the task breakdown session of the Sprint planning the visual display of stories made it easier for the cross functional team to self organize and add tasks to the team and I could already see the Task Board keeping the discussions focused.The visibility that the task board brings  about also support the team to make a very educated decision when making a commitment for the Sprint. As the team made progress with the Sprint task board a transparent view of the  work that is  completed by the  whole team  and also help them get a better picture of what needs to  be completed to meet the Sprint commitment.

Here is a quick summary on how the Task Board helps the team better embrace the Agile value and principles.

Transparency : Brings maximum transparency on the work that is in progress and what needs to be completed to finish the stories  committed for the Sprint.If you can maintain the history of the stories that are completed and Future Product Backlog, by the task board , that will go a long way in bringing about transparency to the whole release and the Product.

Collaboration: At daily stand-up and during the day ,Task board can be a effectively used by the team to collaborate amongst themselves.This will also create opportunities for team members to help each other as the task board clearly indicated where we are with each story and which stories can have some extra help to get completed on.

Prioritization/Focus : Task board is a great indicator to remind the team about limiting work in progress and take a focused approach on meeting the Sprint commitment instead of starting all stories at once and completing lot of tasks but not all stories at the end of the Sprint.

Self Organization : Promotes self organization by having easy way to claim tasks and also help the stand-up to very interactive by using task board and people involved in the work as the focus of the meeting . This changes the potential chance of stand-up being a status meeting where update is give the ScrumMaster or ProjectManager.

Empiricism : Because of it very visual nature, Task Board leaves memories of how work progressed during the Sprint so that it can easily be referenced and used to inspect and adapt the way of approaching work . For example during retrospective , it is easy to refer to the fact that we had all QA/ Verification tasks in the “In Progress” column  and all Coding tasks “Completed”  during the Sprint and make a commitment to change that behavior in the next Sprint.

Humility : It can be a humbling experience for a Product Owner or Manager to look at the task board and see the amount of work the team is doing.If you have the Stories Completed in past Sprint and Product backlog maintained along with the Task Board,it would go a long way in communicating the work the team is doing .

Scrum Trainer and one of respected Agile mentor, Tobias Mayer refers to Task Board as the Heart of Scrum . I have been fortunate to be involved with couple of Scrum Trainings with Tobias and he used task board for running the whole training .

This approach was effective in class as it mirrored what a Scrum implementation would look like in your organization. It also made it easy for the  attendees to prioritize what is most important to be covered in class.

Another key ares where task board can be of advantage is to get other team members and managers curious and involved in the Scrum adoption.Even if you are not adopting Scrum , I would recommend using opportunities to visualize work and use that as a tool to promote communication and collaboration.

I look at Task Board as very powerful tool to visualize work and that in itself has great potential to transform the way we approach work.Task Board not only helps team members visualize tasks, but it takes learning to a new level. Task Board shows what a team has accomplished, it gives motivation to continue new Stories  and look back on the progress everyone has made together.

This visual experience can also act as an organization tool. With the different sections Tasks and Stories can be organized, which creates an easy communication tool between co-workers. No longer does each individual have to figure out what the other has worked on or completed. Instead, co-workers can glance at the Task Board and view every task that is in progress, complete, or otherwise. This organizational advantage is just a bonus that Task Board brings to a team.

Here are some articles on what others have to say about Task Board

Heart of Scrum by Tobias Mayer

Visual Management by  Xavier Quesada Allue

Training for Scrum Task Board Use by Mike Cohn

Visual Management: Creating a Kanban Multiverse by Karl Scotland

Related posts:

1. Using Scrum for Training Scrum
2. The Power of Visualization
3. The significance of a well-maintained Product Backlog
4. First week and Sprint Planning meeting
5. Sprint Review – Your time to shine!
6. The Down and Dirty on Scrum in Medical Device Development